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Providence College Students: Transforming Society

Posted on May 15, 2024

“Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”

– Mother Teresa

Providence College (PC) students complete thousands of hours of community service every year. It’s a way of life for most PC students. Eager to give back to the community that they have called home for the last four years, community service initiatives play a vital role in the PC experience. More than 45 community agencies, schools, and other non-profit sites in the Greater Providence area benefited from PC students’ volunteer time and talent this academic year. Volunteer service is provided through the Office of the Chaplain/Campus Ministry, the Office of Student Affairs, the Feinstein Institute for Public Service, the Office of Public Affairs, Government and Community Relations, the Student Athlete Advisory Council, and many of the College’s student clubs, organizations, and service-learning classes.

FriarServe is a service initiative now in its seventh year. In 2017, PC committed a $100,000 gift to Catholic schools in the Diocese of Providence in celebration of the College’s Centennial and in support of Catholic education in RI. In 2021, PC announced a second gift of $100,000, reaffirming the College’s support of Catholic education in the diocese. The College’s gifts were made through the Diocesan Catholic School Office (CSO) in equal sums for four years, with two major components. The money is used for scholarships given to students attending Catholic elementary and secondary schools via the CSO’s Anchor of Hope Fund, a diocesan financial assistance fund that helps financially strapped families secure a Catholic school education for their children. A portion of the funds are set aside specifically for five Catholic Pre-K – 8 schools in the Greater Providence area: Bishop McVinney School (South Providence), Blessed Sacrament School (Mt. Pleasant), St. Augustine School (also Mt. Pleasant), St. Pius V School (Elmhurst) and St. Rocco School (Johnston).

Perhaps the most important aspect of FriarServe is its community service component. PC students, staff and faculty are invited to volunteer their time at each of the five above-mentioned schools during the academic year. Not all schools have the same programs, but all have more than one. FriarServe continued its dedicated service to those schools again this academic year, providing activities including art club, cheer club, tutoring, classroom assistance, homework help, and gym takeover, as well as reading times.

Volunteer statistics for the seventh year of FriarServe are as follows:

Total numbers of volunteers for 2023-2024: 173; Total number of volunteer hours: 971

Other notable PC student service projects:

• 40 PC first-year students participated in the FaithWorks pre-orientation service immersion program in August. The program, now in its twelfth year, is led by upperclassmen peers. Sponsored by Campus Ministry, FaithWorks enables new PC students to build community with their peers, perform service work for vulnerable populations in Providence, and reflect on the significance of this work for their own lives. The participants were able to do service with sites in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, including My Brother’s Keeper; Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School, St. Patrick’s Academy and Church; St. Pius V School and Church; McAuley Ministries and Habitat for Humanity Providence. Twelve of these students applied and have been accepted to be group leaders in the Faithworks team welcoming the incoming Class of 2028.

• The Service and Justice arm of Campus Ministry also partnered up to organize the MLK Joint Day of Service, collaborating with The Haitian Project ( a program we have been involved with and which was formerly a Service Immersion destination) for a day of education, advocacy and to fill 120 bags of school supplies for the students in Louvetarian Schols Across Haiti offering handwritten notes of encouragement and support. Twenty-one volunteers took part in this even.

• The student leaders of Elderly Outreach engaged hundreds of the Friar student body to personally handwrite seasonal cards to local homebound residents. Nearly 300 handwritten cards were delivered for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

• Fourteen students, a coordinator, and Chaplain visited the ninth ward in St Bernards Parish, New Orleans for the NOLA Immersion trip. One week in January was spent in the neighborhoods worst hit by Hurricane Katrina working alongside new and seasoned programming to rebuild the neighborhoods of New Orleans. We served Grace at the Greenlight offering meals and time to the community experiencing homelessness and worked construction with Youth Rebuilding New Orleans, and Lower Nine Organization and immersed in the history offered at The Whitney Plantation.

• A Spring Break Immersion Opportunity was offered this year. After receiving a record number of applications since the pandemic, we took a group of 14 students and three staff to Playa Mango Costa Rica. We partnered with Creatio Missions and served this small community meeting communities, building their local church and facilitating community spaces to encourage future economy through eco and community centered tourism.
  
• Coordinated through Friends of San Lucas, 14 students from various corners of the PC Student Body will take part once again in May Immersion to Guatemala. With 30 applications for this year’s trip, it marks a record number of applications since the Covid pandemic. This group has already met for the pre-trip retreat supporting our local Emmanuel House Men and now Women’s care and shelter for those experiencing homelessness. They are ready for a week in San Lucas Tolimán, where they will be learning about the community pre and post-civil war and working alongside the local and Indigenous community while learning about and from them.

Established in 1993, the Feinstein Institute for Public Service at Providence College was created to support the major and minor in Public and Community Service Studies. After two decades, the Institute turned its efforts to campus-community partnerships aimed at addressing the larger questions underlying our public and community service systems. Since 2017, the Institute has worked with campus and community partners to focus its efforts on questions of racial and economic justice, particularly for youth and families, both locally and globally. This academic year, the Institute has collaborated with twenty-four community partners.

• The Feinstein Institute’s Community Work Study Program placed Providence College student workers with seventeen schools and non-profits throughout the Providence area. Forty-three students participated in the program and used their federal work study award to serve our partners in the local community in a variety of ways, including as an after-school tutor, health care advocate, or social media intern. The students have worked over 3,100 hours within the community over the past year, gaining professional experience working in non-profits and schools and contributing to community-wide systems that support Providence community members

• The Feinstein Institute’s Feinstein Community Fellows Program brings together undergraduate students and community partners who share the Feinstein Institute’s commitment to overcoming racial inequity, local and global poverty, and barriers to young people’s capacity to achieve their aspirations. Now in its sixth year, the program matched twelve PC students with seven different community organizations. The Fellows were given their own project responsibilities that ranged from supporting day-to-day efforts at Beautiful Day, to enhancing the training and workshops at Mentor RI, to developing curriculum with Onward We Learn. All of the Fellows participated in bi-weekly meetings to reflect on their service and examine social justice, non-profits, power, and privilege. Together, they completed over 1,400 hours of service throughout the 2023-2024 school year.

Athletics:

• The Athletic Department’s commitment to service others, and our surrounding community remained consistently strong as demonstrated by the following data:
  • 2017-18 – 2,060 service hours | $28,800 raised
  • 2018-19 – 3,547 service hours | $49,500 raised
  • 2019-20 – 3,244 service hours | $82,486 raised
  • 2020-21 – 406 service hours* $51,685 raised
  • * Virtual only due to COVID pandemic
  • 2021-22 – 3,380 service hours | $69,601 raised
  • 2022-23 – 3,783 service hours | $64,801 raised
  • 2023-24 – 3,824 service hours | $79,972 raise

At Providence College, we embrace the opportunity of teaching our student-athletes to spark a lifelong commitment to serving others through experiences that develop genuine connections with our communities. “The greatest gift you can give someone is your time.” This academic year, our student athletes continued their outstanding work in the community and have volunteered the most hours in the history of PC Athletics.

Every Providence College student-athlete, representing 19 varsity sports, participated in a range of community service projects throughout the academic year. There were 436 participants out in the community representing the Friars totaling 3,824 hours (as of today). Friar student-athletes participated in 150 opportunities supporting 38 organizations. In total, they raised $79,972 for various charitable organizations for 2023-2024. The economic impact of these hours was $121,614.

• One of the top organizations features their yearly collaboration with the Adopt-a-Family Project, a program set in place by the DaVinci Center to improve the quality of life for the residents in the North End of Providence. This partnership allowed the entire athletic department & all teams to deliver over 450 gifts of clothing and toys to 125 children from 35 families. These gifts were the only ones these children received for the holiday.

• The men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams continue to lead the Northeast in raising funds through the Swim Across America initiative to benefit cancer research. The funds this year were donated to Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, RI. The teams raised over $54,000 in September and has raised over $360,000 since the event was founded.

• The men’s lacrosse, women’s ice hockey, swimming & diving, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s soccer, women’s soccer & cross country/track programs partnered with Team IMPACT, a national non-profit organization, that matches children facing serious illnesses and disabilities with college athletic teams across the country. Friar student-athletes from the above programs have volunteered over 788 hours this academic year. Since 2012, there have been 23 program matches in partnership with Team IMPACT.

• Each Fall, the Providence College community comes together to donate funds to the Smith Hill Advocacy and Research Partners (SHARP) efforts to provide a Thanksgiving Meal to the local community. Every varsity Friar athletics program donated funds, totaling $887.

• A new partnership was established this year with the Boys and Girls Club of East Providence. Members of the Women’s Soccer Team have been volunteering weekly after school to help over 40 students from Orlo Avenue Elementary reinforce important skills in both math and reading. To date, they have volunteered over 50 hours and counting.
  
• Finally, the female student-athletes continued their partnership with Girls on the Run Rhode Island. At their fall 5K race, 97 of the women volunteered their time during this empowering program. In addition, 247 (every female student-athlete) participated in writing an inspirational note to the participants of the 5K including making posters for the race day itself.

Over the past seven years, student-athletes have completed 19,170 hours, raising $425,017. Since we began a partnership with Helper Helper in 2019, we have finished in the top 15 in Division I for community service hours every year.

The PC community also supported numerous charitable organizations:

The School of Continuing Education and students in the “Leading Teams” course for Leadership Development majors, organized two fundraising events in April, to raise awareness and financial support for local organizations:

• Children’s Friend, Providence, RI
  
• Dare To Dream Ranch, Foster, RI
  
• For the ninth year in a row, the President’s Standing Committee on Service (“the Service Board”) coordinated a Thanksgiving Drive, in partnership with the Smith Hill Advocacy and Research Partners (SHARP). The Board raised over $6,000 in monetary donations which helped provide a free Thanksgiving meal of a turkey and fixings to 508 local families. These families were also presented with gift cards to local retail store.
  
• Thanks to the generosity of the Friar Family (students, faculty, alumni, and families), the Office of Campus Ministry collected over 400 gifts and $1000 worth of gift cards for children at the Smith Hill Early Childhood Development Center and San Miguel School, and St. Patrick’s Academy.